Which Goals are Available in Google Analytics & How Should You Use Them?

If you’ve been tracking the success of your website for a while now, you will definitely have noticed the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4, which has created many problems for businesses trying to measure outcomes.

Things have changed so much that Google has even changed what things are called. What used to be "goal tracking" in UA is now "conversions" in GA4.

In this blog post, we’ll be looking at the main differences between Universal Analytics goals and GA4 conversions and provide advice for moving forward with GA4 to ensure you’re properly measuring the success of your website.

Goal Tracking In Universal Analytics: The Good & The Bad 

There were four main goal types in the previous version of Google Analytics: Destination, Duration, Pages/Screens per Session, and Event goals.

Goal Types in Universal Analytics

Destination goals tracked sessions where the visitor made it to a certain page on your site. For example, if you wanted them to visit your services page or a sign up page, that would be the page you tracked. 

Duration goals looked at the amount of time a visitor would spend on your website before leaving. Were they on the site long enough to consume your content or gain any real insights into what your business does?

Pages/Screens per Session tracked how many pages a visitor clicked on while browsing your website. How many pages did they view before leaving your site?

Event goals allowed website owners to track other website interactions by using code to fire custom “events.” For example, if you wanted to measure how many people submitted a form on your contact page, you could set it up as an event.

The Benefits of Universal Analytics Goals

These goal types allowed website owners who weren’t technical to track the most common elements of their website without needing to hire someone with technical know-how to configure their tracking. As long as you wanted to track Destination, Duration, or Pages per Session as your goal, set up was extremely easy. Event goals were a bit trickier and did require some technical understanding, however, with some additional research, it was possible. 

Why GA4 Moved on from These Goals

The basic templates for these goals were limited, and so many people were left trying to create custom events on their own without the technical knowledge they needed. The custom event setup wasn’t particularly intuitive and left website owners confused and struggling. 

Why GA4 is a Major Change from Universal Analytics

The entire framework that Google uses to track and measure websites and online activity has seen an overhaul. Now, every action that takes place on your website is an “event.” Duration and Pages per Session Goals are no longer options, and if you’d like to track those elements, it’ll require custom coding. Unless you simply want to look at visitors to a page, this can become extremely complex.

What You Should Be Doing in GA4

Setting up goals is no longer an easy feat. There are no more templates that you can use as a starting point to create what are now called “conversions.” There are far more opportunities when it comes to what you track and how you do it, but it requires more technical understanding. 

To create a conversion in GA4, you have to start with a new custom “event.” The good news is that you can still set up Destination Events (conversions) in GA4 using the “page_location” parameter - so if you just need to track when people visit your URL, you can do this quite easily. There are also many other pre-build parameters that you can use for conversions, including “value of a sale” or for discount codes, etc. 

After you’ve created the Event, you can turn it into a Conversion. However, for most activity on the website (including Duration and Pages per Session), you’ll need to build out custom configurations using tools like Google Tag Manager, to fire events that you can track using the “event_name” parameter.

What This Means for You

For website owners with technical expertise, GA4 offers a lot more power and flexibility to track exactly what you care about. You’ll have more in-depth insights into your website users, their actions, and their intentions. 

But for non-technical website owners, you’ll have a difficult time setting up any Events that don’t use the limited built-in options. To accurately track user behavior, you’ll likely have to seek external technical help.

Use a Specialized Agency for Your B2B Marketing Analytics in GA4

GA4 is an exciting upgrade from its predecessor and there’s a lot you can do with it - as long as you have the knowledge and understanding. With the right know-how and experience, you can pinpoint exactly how to optimize a website to increase conversions and maximize ROI. 

That’s where we come in. 

Your clients trust you because you’re a specialist in what you do. And our clients trust us because we’re the foremost experts in what we do. B2B marketing analytics is our world, and we make it our business to know the ins and outs. If you don’t have the time or expertise to get to grips with GA4, get in touch, and we’ll talk you through what we do and how we do it.